Up Here/CMYG: a Special Project by the Northern Ontario Society of Architects

CMYG is an exploration in additive and subtractive colour theory; more simply stated as the interaction between coloured light and pigment. The use of mono-frequency cyan light and intermittent white light alters your ability to read the colours of an oversized CMYG halftone screen across the surface of the installation. Under mono-frequency conditions everything appears as either cyan or grey tones. With the addition of white light, the true colour of the halftone screen becomes visible.

CMYG, image by Mark Baechler.

CMYG, image by Mark Baechler.

CMYG, image by Mark Baechler.

CMYG, image by Mark Baechler.

The project was installed in a narrow interior alley adjacent to the primary music venue for Up Here, an annual urban art and music festival held in downtown Sudbury, ON in August 2017. A collection of 50 parallelepiped boxes, painted with a series of halftone screens, form a winding line of benches and niches for visitors to sit, rest and people watch. The boxes, repurposed from a previous NOSA installation titled Archipelago, were designed with the specific intention that they could and would be reconfigured into a series of unique installations.

Up Here, image by Amber Baechler.

Up Here, image by Amber Baechler.

Up Here, image by Braden Martel.

Up Here, image by Breana Chabot.

Up Here, image by Breana Chabot.

CMYGis the third collaboration between members of NOSA and carpenters at Vision Build Carpentry & Contracting. Our design process is highly collaborative: we bring models, trace paper and sketchbooks to a café or pub and develop the design concept in a discursive and iterative process. This year, the design team included architects, intern architects, academics and students from the McEwen School of Architecture in Sudbury.